2011 grad awarded Fulbright to help teach English in Germany

Ryan Adams, a 2011 Citadel graduate and a native of Mooresville, N.C., has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to serve as an English teaching assistant in Germany.

Ryan Adams

Adams, who majored in German at the military college, has an extensive background with the language and its culture. Besides having a mother from Bavaria, Adams interned as a Star of the West Scholar with Deutsche Welle TV in Berlin in the summer of 2010. He also studied abroad in Germany in the spring of 2009.

Adams will teach at a middle school from September through June of next year. The exact location is still pending.

“The process of studying and learning another language has offered me the opportunities to study abroad in Hamburg and complete an internship in Berlin,” said Adams. “My ultimate goal is to teach German in U.S. secondary schools. In order to gain firsthand knowledge of the German schools and their curricula—knowledge I aim to impart to my own students of German to fire their desire to study abroad—I applied for a Fulbright in Germany.”

This will not be Adams’ first teaching experience. Currently, he is teaching English as a second language in Suwon, South Korea. In summer 2011, he volunteered with the Americorps VISTA program as a tutor and counselor with Jennie Moore Elementary School in Mt. Pleasant.

Retired Citadel German Professor Al Gurganus, who served head of the department of modern languages and the founding director of fellowships, provided Adams’ recommendation for the Fulbright grant. He lauded Adams as “a man of profound values.”

“Adams leads a life of uncommon depth, discipline and clarity,” said Gurganus. “He resolutely places communal welfare above personal gain and defines his own significance by the contribution he makes to others.”

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